AustLit

'LARRY KENT’S reputation as a judge of feminine figures earns the crime investigator the position of judge in a beach-girl beauty competition—The Miss Down-Under Beauty Quest. The finalists include Miss Redfern, Miss Balmain, and Miss Surry Hills.

'Various threats of violence and offers of bribes to influence Kent in favour of Miss Surry Hills and Miss Redfern has its climax when Kent is assaulted savagely by some thugs, but when his choice, Miss Balmain, is also assaulted, he knows that the evil influence at work is far more serious than threats and bribe offers.

'Miss Balmain’s mother had been a schoolteacher. That she worked at Glendale School at the same time as one of the other judges, the elderly Professor Bigelow, gives Kent a clue, which when followed up unmasks a maniac who was a rejected suitor of Miss Balmain’s mother.

'The fact that the rival basher gangs sponsoring the other candidates in the quest pursue their feud so strenuously that the leaders end up in the casualty ward of the hospital is shaded completely by a sensational suicide which brings the play to a close.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 13 May 1950, p.27.